Tribulation Turtles: Midnight Cry Book 2
by Lady Rane
Summary: The worst 7 years of man's history is about to begin and the turtles are caught up in the struggle. NT & Left Behind crossover picks up where Midnight Cry left off.
1. Patterns

1

Leo

Beads of condensation were forming on the glasses of iced tea that I was sharing with Cameron "Buck" Williams of the Global Weekly. The esteemed reporter was actually in our house. About three weeks ago Raphael had saved Buck's life, and I had saved Raphael's, but the reporter didn't know that. It was Bruce Barnes that had introduced us, and neither Raphael nor I had felt the need to tell him that a sniper had tried to kill him. Tried, I think, because the Antichrist wasn't sure of his mind control over the reporter.

Summer at the end of the world. Only it wasn't, yet. The temple hadn't been built; the treaty hadn't been signed. That would mark the start of the Tribulation. That would be the opening chapter of the end of the world. But summer just the same, a hot, dry summer in a Chicago suburb, so different from New York City. The fan overhead at our kitchen table whirred constantly. I found myself staring up at huge clumps of dust and dirt. Later, I'd get up there to clean them.

Buck was reading a list I'd printed out for him, looking for patterns. He was a reporter, and he was good at it, and that is why Bruce had gotten us together. April and Don had found the list, and in normal times I'd go to Don to look for patterns. But Don had become more and more reclusive as of late, staying in his room and conducting experiments which he wasn't sharing with the rest of us. April might have been good for looking for patterns, but she was pulling 80 hours a week at Exetor, the think tank where she did the bulk of her work and research. Nobody in their right mind ever asked Raphael to look for such things. He was recovering nicely from the gunshot wound he'd taken to his leg, thanks to the nanite treatment that April and Don had made available to us, but our failed rescue of Casey was weighing on him, and he had plenty to grapple with as a new believer in Christ.

The reporter had sandy blonde curls, one of which was in his eye as he studied the list. He put it down and looked up at me. When we'd first met, Buck had wanted to know everything about us. His reporter's instincts had dug the entire story out of me. I hadn't minded telling it. I had gotten the sense that what drove Buck was a need to _know_, and once that was accomplished, he was satisfied.

"Leo, I'm not sure that you're going to believe my theory on this list, but I've isolated some things. My name's on it. Chaim Rosensweig. Your friend Casey Jones. April's name is on it. Bruce's. Raphael's name is on it. Your name is on it. Other names. I think this list is a list of people that could be significant in the upcoming war for souls. Some are already believers. Some are already _dead_. I think in one way or another the Antichrist has taken an interest in the lives of each and every one of these people. They may be getting job offers and too good to be true deals like your pal Casey did. They might be getting a bullet to the head."

"I don't mind telling you it worries me that he knew about us before any of this ever started," I told Buck. He nodded his grim agreement, and I leaned back. I picked up a pencil and started tapping it on the sheaf of paper, which was thick enough to do for a novel when all printed out. Thicker.

Weeks ago I had decided that I was not just going to sit back while God and Satan warred for the souls of the undecided on this Earth. Raphael, for once, had agreed with me. The worst 7 years of Earth's history was coming. It wasn't enough for me to try to win the souls of just Don and April and Casey. Those in our immediate circle. I felt we had to do something, to use our talents to fight evil – just as we always had. This list, I'd felt, was key. I still felt that way.

"I'm going to isolate this down to Chicago," I said at last. "We've always been local workers, my brothers and I. We're not going to get involved in international events like you, Buck. But there's going to be plenty to do." I'd acquired a Blackberry – one of April's old ones, and I had a copy of the database there. I executed the command and slid it over April's lacy tablecloth towards Buck. "Do you have any idea where we might start?"  
Buck Williams scrolled through the list of names, then landed on one. "This one. Professor Desmona Stryfe. She's a professor of comparative religion at University of Illinois that's big in scholarly circles. She's releasing a new book three days from now about end time prophecies across several traditions. Her conclusions could support either the Antichrist's goals or God's – I don't know which. But I guess that's kind of the point."

"I guess so. Thank you, Buck."

He shook my hand and smiled. "And now…I gotta get going. I've got a story to follow."

I saw him to the door. The house seemed so empty. I heard Don swearing loudly through the vent though once Buck was safely outside and in his car. I grimaced. It was no longer Raph that I'd have to convince to do anything. In the New World Order, Raph was in my corner. We had achieved an equality where we balanced each other out, and were making an incredible team. No, in the New World Order, it was Don that was constantly at odds with both of us. Don that would have to be convinced.

Going to Raphael would only make Don feel ganged up on, so I sprinted up the stairs and knocked on Don's door myself. Raphael would help me plan whether Don was going or not, but I wanted my brother there. We were a team. We'd always been a team. Even without Mikey, I desperately wanted us to stay a team. Especially without Mikey, who had been taken in the Rapture. Mikey and Splinter, gone to God.

"Don? Can I come in?"

"Just a second!" I heard lots of stuff shuffling and moving in there. Whatever else was going on in there, Don was doing something he didn't want Raph or me to know about.

It was scaring me.

It was scaring me a lot.


	2. The Red Door

2

Leo

He came to the door with his mask off. Don didn't open the door all the way. He just propped his elbow up on the frame and stared out at me. "I'm in the middle of something really important, Leo, what is it?"

It wasn't like him to get impatient or snap or rude either, but there it was. I held in my sigh. Sighing, at this stage, would just upset him. "I have a mission I want us to take on," I said slowly. "There's a woman who might be in danger."

Don looked at me. He had a Dr. Pepper in his hand. He continued to look at me while he took a long swig of it. Very blasé. Very cool.

"This is part of your 'Tribulation Project', isn't it," he said at last. Raphael had been sharing notes, studying Revelation together. We'd tried to share it with Don and April too. Both of them knew that I had plans towards doing something about it.

"Yes, it is," I said. "You promised me three weeks ago you'd stick with us no matter what though, regardless of your beliefs. Are you going back on your word now?"

He pushed back from his frame. "No. I'm not. Just tell me where and when to go."

He slammed the door in my face. I found myself staring at it. It was a good thick door, painted red. All the doors in this house were painted a different color, as if the previous owners had wanted to distinguish themselves. It was a dark red, and the paint was starting to peel. I had the sudden urge to paint his door for him. It wouldn't have been such an eyesore if it had been open – ever. But it practically never was.

Time for Raph's room. His door was open. I knocked twice on the frame anyway, but he motioned me in. He was balanced on his right leg – the same leg he'd been shot in. Nanites or not it was weak. I could tell the exercise was putting him in massive amounts of pain. He'd refused all medicines. I stared at him. Before the Rapture, before our faith, before everything, to see Raphael exhibiting anything like discipline, anything except skill fueled by raw anger and borderline hatred, would have been extremely rare. Not that he'd ever had trouble with pain. But he would have gotten frustrated with his shaking and trembling balance, and he probably would have stomped off to go brood about it. Now, when he wobbled, he put out a hand to steady himself and began again.

I got into a little more depth with Raphael, covering everything that Buck had said. He finally set down and nodded, a dark, troubled emotion passing over his eyes.

"We'll find a way to help Casey," I promised. "I just don't know how yet."

"He won't even speak to me these days."

Shortly after Raphael had tried to grab Casey away from Nicolae Carpathia, he'd tried to call Casey to deliver the warning over the phone that he hadn't managed in person. Jones had hung up on him.

The war for souls was coming. I was all geared up to battle for them. Yet I couldn't figure out, other than prayer, the best way to go about battling for the souls of three of the most important people in my life.

Don, April, and Casey seemed to be falling farther and farther away from us with every passing day.


	3. SemiAutomatic

3

Raph

The first thing was first – someone had ta get into Desmona Stryfe's office and find out what kind of mission we were looking at. If we were lookin' at a supporter of the Antichrist's goals, then we were lookin' at some gentle persuasion – which meant this was all Leo, who'd probably try something over IM or somethin' like that. If she was against the Antichrist though, we were probably lookin' at snipers or assassins. Simple as that.

The someone, Leo and I had agreed, was me. He was the better fighter, but I'm the better skulker. At midnight I was perched in a tree outside of her office. Her window was one of those flip lock things, so that you virtually have to bust the window to get into it. Even at midnight there was plenty of activity on a University campus, even after the disappearances. Maybe especially. The sounds of a loud baseline and shouting, whooping, drinking kids was my constant accompaniment.

Then again, with the number of beer bottles breaking…

I finally timed a tap at the window with my sai with the loudest of the partying. I cleared it out, rather than risking there might be a built in window contact or alarm system. I doubted there would be, but just in case, I didn't wanna take any chances. I slid through and looked around.

Stryfe had been in a number of articles; each of which she'd framed up around the office. Her desk was disorganized, covered in books and papers. The walls themselves were bookshelves. None of the titles held the least bit of interest for me. There were no pictures of friends or family at all. There was a single ancient computer, left on for the Windows '95 screen saver to bop all around in the blackness. I shook my head and decided to leave it alone. With most people these days, the important stuff is on the computer. With this lady, I was betting it was all on the desk. I pulled out a small flashlight and went picking through the mess on the desk until I found a file labeled "Presentation Notes." I opened them up and flipped through them. What I saw made my breath catch.

"Red to Blue," I muttered into my phone. Don had recently upgraded it to involve some kind of radio capacity, which I liked better than the phone.

"This is Blue, go ahead."

"We're going to have to go on stakeout. Looks like she intends to announce to her audience of some 400 people tomorrow that Big Brother is the White Horse, you read?"

Yeah, the codes were corny, but Leo and I had agreed that it was time to get careful, twice as careful as we'd ever been with the Foot. In a lot of ways the Foot had thought and fought a lot like we had. We'd never gotten involved with the government, snipers, assassins. The Brave New World. The New World Order. Leo and I had a hundred names for it.

"Copy that. Get out of there, Red. We'll regroup with Purple in the south parking lot and get on the same page."

I did get out of there, but I did a sweep for bombs first. Nothing in the office. Hopefully the broken window would make her be more careful, make her call the police, increase the coverage and her safety. But I wasn't relying on any stinking police. If Professor Stryfe was going to live through her announcement, it really was going to be up to us.

I got back to the south parking lot at a jog. It was the faculty lot, not far from where I'd been, and thus abandoned. Leo was in the shadows of the building with Don, who had some sort of bag with him. "I think our coverage should be constant," Leo was saying. "We'll need to start trailing her, just in case anyone wants to go for a pre-emptive strike. Someone will need to watch the hall where she'll be giving her presentation at all times, and her home, to avoid tampering." I knew if he'd had a fourth he'd want to keep watching the office as well, but tailing her would have to do.

"That means days away from home," Don muttered.

"Yeah, it does," I snapped at him. His attitude lately was really starting to piss me off. "So if the lady dies for her scholarship, what do we put on her gravestone? Sorry, coulda saved your life, but Don was too busy working on _his?"_

"Shut up, Raph. I'm here, aren't I?"

It was like watching myself, only worse. I suppose Don always had some anger, but he'd hidden it even from himself. He'd always stayed so mild. Now, whatever he was feeling, those hidin' places had been completely knocked out. What emerged was something darker than even my rages, which I, after all, always used to let out right away. Don's seemed to be festering, growin' right through him and staying there. Never leaving, always growing.

"Don," Leo said, with far more patience than I felt, "Which assignment would you prefer?"

"I'll tail her," Don said. "If I can't work I'd rather be sitting still." Then he reached into his bag and pulled out something I had never thought to see in his hands.

A semi-automatic pistol.

"What the _fuck_ is that?" I was trying to work on my swearing as a new Christian, but the transformation ain't instant, and shock robbed me of my restraint.

"It's a rather good semi-automatic," Don said.

Leo made an inarticulate sound of disapproval.

I took a breath. "I can _see_ that," I said. "What is it for?"

"You two keep saying the world's changing. Becoming so much more dangerous," Don says evenly. "Well, I don't think its time to fight with a stick anymore. I think its best to get seriously. A staff isn't going to do much against sniper rifles anyway. You proved that, Raph."

"The only thing that's good for is murder," Leo hissed, pointing at the gun.

"Because you spared the life of the guy trying to kill Raph?" Don shot back.

I grimaced. Leo looked away. I knew that had been bothering him. So I spoke up. "If he hadn't killed that man, like he did, the gun would have likely gone off before he could have done anything else. That was a rare situation. It was him or it was me. But that's different, Don."

Leo's head snapped up. "And you're going against all honor. You're going against everything Master Splinter taught us. How can you _do_ that?"

"Master Splinter is gone," Don said roughly. "I'm still here. That tells me a thing or two about survival. I know what you two think, but I think its bull. God wouldn't be that cruel. So all that remains is a hostile force. Maybe it _is_ this Carpathia guy. He's certainly getting the world on his string. They really are talking one world government now, have you heard? And making the capitol of it Babylon, Iraq, of all things. New Babylon, they're calling it. He's going to be controlling all the resources. I'm not going to let it happen to anyone else. I'm done playing around."

We'd heard. Leo and I had become obsessive watchers of the news, keeping track of it in the prophecies. "If you believe that," Leo said slowly, "Then why can't you believe the rest?"

Don glowered at him, and Leo's hands went up in a passive gesture of exasperated surrender. We all stood there in silence for a moment, then Leo said, "Lets just get this done. We'll talk about the gun later. We'll talk about it all later. I'll take the house, Raph." He did that, I think, because he and Don would have to stay there together for the rest of the night, and he didn't think Don and I were a particularly wise combo just then.

As I made my way towards the University auditorium, I couldn't help but think that he was right.

**Author's Note: ** Hi guys! Jo Dawn, Reinbeuchaser and Elfrowan, thanks so much for the reviews and encouragement. It always helps to know people are reading. ;) Now is also a great time to say I own neither the TMNT nor Left Behind, that this is not for profit and etc.


	4. Assassin

4

Don

It had been a boring couple of days tailing Desdamona Stryfe. A frustrating few days away from my notes and my work. It was delicate stuff, and I was glad I hadn't left any of it out when Leo called me away. Recombinant DNA was tricky stuff to mess with.

But that's where my hope was, and I couldn't afford to give it up. I couldn't afford the wasted time either. The breakthrough I was hoping to accomplish went far beyond anything anyone on Earth had ever achieved, and for the first time ever it would be for something I wanted, something I really wanted, more than for scientific curiosity or technical need.

The day of the lecture came as a welcome relief. We'd finish guarding the woman and then we'd be all done and I could get back to my lab and work on the cure. I stepped across the high beams of the lecture hall, crouching there with my gun. I signaled to Raph, who was now down below on the west end of the hall behind a group of unused podiums that have been pushed to the side. Then I signaled to Leo, who was up on the east end of the hall, concealed within the shadows. The lights were off, and Stryfe was fiddling with a laptop. She was intending to do a Powerpoint presentation, which somehow struck me as rather funny. Here's the Antichrist guys! I have it all in Powerpoint so it must be true!

So far nothing seemed out of order. People were filing in, and nobody seemed to be an assassin.

Then I spotted someone else crouched in the scaffolding with me.

Someone I recognized.

I should have signaled the other two, but instead I launched myself against the intervening distance and put my gun directly in Casey Jones' face. "Fancy meeting you here."

"What are _you_ doing here?" Casey demanded. He had a sniper rifle.

"Protecting the Professor," I said, smiling. I started to increase the pressure on the trigger. This was too good, too easy. Casey, who was an admitted flaw in my plans, the rival for April's affections, was here. We already knew he worked for the Antichrist. If I shot him protecting the professor, right in his smug, bluff, moron face, who could blame me? Even with all that lecturing about my gun? And the fact that he had been sent to kill the professor was written all over his face. His stupid. Punk. Face.

But I didn't pull the trigger, and some resolve hardened in his eyes as well. He raised the rifle as if he were going to try to shoot me – then he flipped it and sent the butt straight towards my face.

Things were happening all at once then. I snapped my head back and Casey grabbed my gun wrist, slamming it into the scaffolding. The gun fell and went off when it hit the floor. People started screaming and fleeing, and someone cried out as if they'd been hit. Hoping he wasn't dead, I nevertheless flipped Casey up and over my head. He went sailing, fell, and caught himself on another part of scaffolding. Then he flipped himself up again, even as I got to my feet.

"Don!" Leo was shouting into the radio. "Don, what's going on?"

I didn't bother answering. "Assassin," I snarled at him.

"She's an enemy of peace, Don," Casey growled. "I'm doing this for the good of the world!" He tried to nail me with punches with every word, as if a good blow to the head would make it all clear. I blocked each shot, then kicked him as hard as I could. He sailed into the opposite wall, then fell down onto a table, which collapsed under him and broke his fall. I flipped out of the scaffolding and landed next to him. He rolled away and saw my brothers running to catch up, drawing their weapons. Raphael stopped short when he saw who I was fighting.

"What the shell!" Raph demanded. I couldn't think of anything stupider than his way of turning swear words into turtle metaphors so he could try to be a good choir boy and clean up his language, but there it was. "Casey?"

Casey backed away a few steps. He was dressed in a suit now, which made him look a lot more fearsome than his hockey mask get up ever had. Stryfe had already left. The lecture hall was in shambles now. He pulled out a side-arm and Leo drew his sword, also looking a little stunned. I lept for him, but he turned, shot the window, and barreled through it. We were on the first floor, and his motorcycle was right outside. All three of us tried to pursue, but he was off in a dust cloud before we'd even gotten to the window.

The silence stretched between us until the blare of sirens snapped us all back to reality.

"Your gun nearly killed an innocent," Leo growled at me as we barreled right out of the same window and went taking off.

"Fine, I'll stop using it," I snapped. "As I didn't manage to shoot the assassin anyway."

"The assassin? That was our friend!" Raph was on the other side of me, putting in his two cents. I liked it better when he and Leo were fighting all the time. With them putting up a constant united front they were growing utterly insufferable.

"He had a sniper rifle aimed right at our charge's head," I shot back. "So from where I'm standing, that makes him an assassin. Face it, Raph, _your_ buddy is now working for _your_ enemy. I did the job. The woman's safe isn't she? Now can we please go back home? I've wasted enough time on this stupidity!"

A few more twists and turns took us to our hidden van, and Leo slid into the driver's seat. "Well Donnie," he pointed out at last, "At the very least you have to admit the fact that there was an attempt on her life sort of proves our point. If Nicolae Carpathia isn't the Antichrist, then what does she have to fear from some professor saying he is? She'd be risking her career with such silly talk normally."

"Oh, so this goes from a weapon's lecture to a God talk!" I was fuming now. I slammed into shotgun and buckled my seatbelt, then crossed my arms. Maybe if I crossed them hard enough I could shut everyone up! "Let me tell you something, Leo. I don't give a damn about God. I don't believe in God. And if I did believe in God, not only is He the guy that took my brother and father away, but he's also the guy that made sure we lived in exile and hiding our whole lives. He's the one that's made it hard on us. I've prayed before and He never answered my prayer. He never gave me the one thing I want more than anything else in all the world. And he took away two of the things that make the world worth living in. So honestly? If this Carpathia guy is the enemy of God, I have to admit I'd be tempted into signing up myself! I'm doing this because he's _your_ enemy and because you're family and because I love you both, but I want you both to get off this subject!"

I meant every word I said. They seemed to be able to tell, because they went silent for the ride home. Which was fine by me. The elusive formula that had been chasing itself around my brain for days was finally starting to snap into place in my mind. God might not have been willing to secure me the one thing I wanted more than anything else…but if I was right, I'd soon be helping myself without him.

**Author's Notes: ** Thanks again to all my faithful reviewers! I went back and fixed the tense change in Chapter 1 that got pointed out to me. I didn't see one in 2 though I do see a typo I need to go fix in 3. Don't worry folks, April is around and yes, you'll be seeing her, those who asked. Watching the TMNT movie tonight inspired me to work on this a bit more!


	5. Science Genius Boy

5

Don

After returning to my lab, I felt much more myself.

I took a deep breath and switched on the special high-power lamps I'd been using. I put my eye to the microscope and watched the progression of my samples. One test. One test, and then I'd know. I walked over to a mouse that I'd had nesting in a sample of April's hair for a few weeks. I pulled out a canister of the original mutagen. I had the mouse in one of those huge pet containers, the type that house rabbits at the store. I took a dropper and put a few droplets of the glowing pink mess behind the mouse's ears.

I watched her grow, becoming more humanoid—mutating. She was just a toddler at this point, but she opened her mouth and coo'd at me. Cute. I almost regretted using her for testing.

But I pulled over my formula and injected it slowly into her arm. "Now then, if I can turn you back into a mouse—I can take the next step," I murmured.

She squeaked unhappily, but I pushed the plunger all the way down.

I'd already killed three or four mice trying this, but this time…

This time she hit the ground of her cage, curled in on herself—and shifted back to a mouse by slow degrees. I watched her for half an hour. At the end of it, she yawned, scampered over to her food bowl, and started eating, unaware of all the higher brain functions she'd missed out on.

"Thanks, Hope," I told her, naming this mouse. The one who survived. I'd keep her, I decided, forever.

Of course, I didn't want to regress to turtle-hood. I wanted something else entirely. Now I had to switch _off _some genetic sequences and switch _on _others. I checked and triple-checked my work. I was exhausted by the time it was done. By then, it was lunch time on the next day. I hadn't eaten or slept.

I loaded the entire mess into a needle and held it up, taking a deep breath. This was it. If I was wrong, I was probably dead. If I was right…

If I was right, April and I could be together. And if that could happen, if that miracle could be true, well then…

Then anything was possible. Anything.

I'd told my brothers I didn't believe in God. That wasn't really true. I did believe in God. I just—thought He had a different character than the God they were presenting. When I heard them speak I felt they were earnestly and lovingly presenting a half-truth they believed. I kept feeling like there was more to the story, and until I could either figure out what it was or until someone told me what it was, I wasn't going to drink the KoolAid. The God I saw was a god of unconditional love. Who would not save 2% of the population—I'd run the figures myself—and leave the other 98% to burn.

And burn forever, at that. Tortured. Something about _eternal _torture seemed out of proportion with even the worst crimes we could manage to commit in a temporal way.

So I did pray as I set the tip of that needle into my arm, and pressed the plunger.

The pain…was the hottest, tightest, most intense thing I'd ever felt in my life. The mouse had just panted. I began to regret making her go through this—for the 30 seconds I was able to think at all…

**Author's Note: **I am a thinker, and a person who studies, and studies, and studies. I have learned more about the character of God, and the Bible, and much much more. A few months back I posted a rather panicked message about where I believed the world was going. I have since deleted that message in favor of preaching some true Good News.

I believe God inspired me to write the first story to draw people to Him, and I believe God has inspired me to continue now. I haven't—literally have not physically been able—to write this story for years and years. But now I can, and now I feel like God is demanding that I tell the other half of the tale. So you will see some variations from the Left Behind universe into a true turtles AU. I will keep many of the story threads that got started, however, in the interest of continuity with _Midnight Cry. _I hope that you will enjoy the direction the story is going in as much as I think I'm going to enjoy writing it. To Red Turtle especially, I think this sequel will answer the questions that have been burning in your own heart. I'm not going to tell you that you've been wrong. In fact, I might have to say that you've been quite right. I hope you will all bear with me, and God bless. Thank you all for waiting so long!


	6. Transformation

**6**

**Leo**

I'd been on the couch resting my eyes when I heard Donnie scream.

I'm not sure which of us was moving first, me or Raph, but we were moving. I know Raph shouldered the door open first, which hit the opposite wall with a resounding crash. We found him on the floor, curled up into a ball.

"Don…?" I asked. I reached out to touch him, laying a hand on his shell. And it was _brittle. _I screamed myself, though in shock and dismay, as my hand went literally _through _the shell. That portion of it simply crumbled into dust. I had a sense of fear which only grew; even a cracked shell is dangerous.

Don was laughing and crying all at once, even as he howled himself hoarse. "It hurts," he managed to say.

"Dear God, what have you done?" I asked. I could see a needle, inches from his hand.

Raphael stood there with an intensely frozen, horrified look on his face. I watched the color start leaching out of Don's skin. More of the shell cracked, crumbled, sloughed away like tartar from a tooth. A few hard, brittle pieces hit the ground. Most of them crumbled. I'd never seen anything more vulnerable looking or helpless than a man-turtle without his shell. I thought I was watching my brother die, but I was paralyzed.

He started to pant and sweat as his color finally turned completely. He wasn't green any longer. He'd shifted to the color that a Japanese man might be if said man had never once seen the sun. Other changes were happening as well. His hands and feet started to look deformed, until I realize they were shrinking, just as his muscle mass seemed to be re-distributing somewhat. He flopped onto his back, and I hissed, thinking he'd break it. He didn't. He did, however, start to hiss and scratch his chest and his bald egg of a head, his arms his legs and just about everywhere he could reach. Moments later I understood why. Thick hair was growing onto his head, and every other place you'd expect to find it on a male human's body. The hair was a muddy green-brown color—brown at the base, but with such a greenish tinge to it that most humans would call it green anyway.

At last, comprehension pushed its way past my emotional shock. "You've turned yourself into a—a human?"

Don nodded his head rapidly a few times, still panting and sweating. But the worst seemed to be over. He started to laugh again. He opened almond-shaped eyes. His eyes were the same eyes as before, if put into smaller form and tucked into that Japanese shape. They were still my brother's eyes. "I can fix you both too," he assured us.

Raphael and I took our steps back at the same time. "You keep your whatever away from me, Dr. Jeckyl," Raphael snapped. He was panting too, in shock or fear or both.

"I don't need fixing," I said, and I have no idea what tone of voice I used.

"Suit yourselves," Don replied, snagging a blanket from his bed to wrap himself in. My mind recorded the action; of course he was no longer as adapted to walking around uncovered. We'd have to figure out how to get him some clothes. _Clothes!_

"Why?" I asked him, and this time I know what the tone was, because it matched the sudden stab of anguish that I felt.

"You two," Don replied, "may be content to live a life in the shadows, unable to fit with anybody or anything. I'm not. I'm not content to do that anymore."

"This is about April," Raphael blurted out suddenly. "Son of a bitch!"

I couldn't even reprimand him for the curse. He'd taken another horrified step back, and his eyes were as wide as I'd ever seen them.

"So what if it is?" Don asked, with that sort of insufferable scientist's calm he employed on a regular basis.

I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. "Alright," I said. "Alright. You're human now. That's your choice and your right, and we're going to support you in it. I hope you know what you're doing, because there could be side-effects you didn't stop to consider—but it's your choice. We need to get you some clothes, and then you'll need to start training. Your body won't have any muscle-memory that works for you anymore. It's used to a different weight, a different height, a different muscle composition, the presence of a shell—you'll have to start over again." And suddenly, the purchase of that awful _gun _made sense.

Don was looking at me. Only looking. Raphael was too, though his look was shock and a little bit of disgust, too. Well. It was okay for Raphael to act as he'd always acted. He was still more controlled than I'd ever seen him, and in a way it was a refreshing relief. This new bond between us was awesome, but at the same time it was good to know he hadn't done a complete personality 180 either. He was still Raphael. _And Donatello,_ I reminded myself, _is still Donatello._

I tried to put myself in his shoes, to feel the pain, the confusion, and the longing that he must have felt to try such a thing.

I sank down beside him and put my arms around him. I didn't cry, though I wanted to. After a moment, he hugged me in turn.

I heard Raphael stalk out of the room and slam the front door of the house behind him.


End file.
